Two public radio webcasting royalty pacts

Blog item posted August 24, 2009

Current agreement, negotiated under the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008

Next agreement, just negotiated under the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009

Term:2005 – 2010

calendar years

Term:2011 – 2015
calendar years

Who is covered: 450-480 public radio
stations, NPR, APM, PRI and PRX.

Who is covered: 490 public radio stations, plus no more than 10 additional stations in each calendar year, plus NPR, APM, PRI and PRX.

Royalty payments: $1.85 million, paid by CPB as a lump sum. Based on annual fees of $500 for each pubcasting entity, except for news/information stations, billed at $250 each.

Royalty payments: $2.4 million, paid by CPB in annual installments of $480,000. Based on annual fees of $500 for each pubcasting entity that streams music. Payments for news and information stations are not required, and web-stream usage data for news stations is not factored into calculations of systemwide aggregate tuning hours (ATH).

Audience threshold for additional fees, or Aggregate Tuning Hours “True-Up”: If the
total ATH of all pubcasting participants exceed 764,600,000 in 2008, 2009 and 2010 combined, CPB will pay an additional $.000251 per ATH.

Threshold for Aggregate Tuning Hours “True-up”: If total ATH for all covered entities exceeds a cap specified for each year of the agreement, CPB could pay additional fees up to the negotiated limit of $2.88 million, at per-performance rates that increase over the five-year term. These additional payments will not exceed $480,000. For 2011, the music ATH cap is 279,500,000; if tuning hours for pubcasting web streams exceeds this amount, CPB will pay an additional 57 cents per 1,000 performances ($.00057 per performance). The cap increases .005 percent annually through 2015, while the per-performance rate rises to 83 cents per 1,000 performances by 2015.

Reporting: Most stations are required to report playlist and streaming usage data during two consecutive weeks of each quarter, but pubcasters with the largest web audiences (those with ATH in the top 20 percent) must provide “census reports,” tracking these details full-time. For calendar year 2010, stations in the top 30 percent must provide census reports. The 2005-2010 agreement also asks stations that have web-streaming information for the early years of the agreement to report it to SoundExchange.

The agreement phases in reporting requirements over two years: At least 60 percent of covered pubradio webcasters are required to report for this year and at least 80 percent for 2010.

Reporting: Requirements are the same as under the current agreement. Stations with ATH in the top 30 percent are required to provide full-time “census” reporting.